Saturday, May 17, 2014

The Turnstone's Manna

The word “manna” is not-so-often used in twenty-first
century Texan-speak.But this age-old
word is one of my favorites to visualize.

A professor of the Hebrew language taught me that many folk
would define this word in terms of the miraculous food provided to the
Israelites, during those very difficult years of wandering about the desert (that famous story of the Exodus from
Egypt).

And so folk-of-today might guess at a definition for
manna to be:miracle food, gifted from
the Creator. But this professor also shared a more basic definition that should
be understood.Manna is a word that may
simply mean:What is it?

Now friends and family know that Mother Nature “gifted”
me with a sense of humor that delights in wondering
about what I’ll call “orthogonal views” to commonly held concepts.(While at the same time never wanting my
sense of humor to hold even a hint of ugliness or disrespect; and
unfortunately, at times, my shared humor has caused me to show symptoms of
foot-in-mouth disease)

With this “gifted” sense of humor, I have my own
personal (and respectful) visual image of that age-old desert wandering.I like to visualize large to-go bags of
Tex-Mex food being dropped down onto those tired and hungry nomads.As the Tex-Mex food is unwrapped and opened,
those hungry humans gather around and call out:“Manna?(What is it?)”

And the answer by those closest to the miracle-drop is
quite obvious: “We don’t know, but it
sure-does smell GOOD!”

And so my imagery of this miraculous Tex-Mex food came
to mind while on a recent birding trip to Rollover Pass, on the Bolivar
Peninsula.

It seems I happened onto a spot that a fisherman vacated, leaving behind the remains of his expensive fresh-shrimp
bait.And surprisingly, the gulls were
not the first to find it.

A Ruddy Turnstone, wandering
about the shoreline, came upon this shrimp.I swear that Turnstone looked at the shrimp, and then looked right up at
me and said:“What is it?”

And of course I replied, “Try it, you may like it.”

The Turnstone walked around the shrimp, looking hard at
it, and then I swear looked right back up at me and said:“No really, Manna?”

I just quietly chuckled and said:“Try it, you may like it.”

And the rest of the pictures best tell what this Ruddy
Turnstone did with this gifted delicacy.This manna was devoured in that same way that most Texans eat fried
shrimp, including one particular closed-eye expression of epicurean pleasure.

1 comment:

First, I love the photos of the turnstone. They have such lovely and striking colors and patterns. In this set of photos I particularly like the stripes on the head.His/her conversation with the author is fun. Thanks!